Birding Pictures

Indigo Buntings–More Eye Candy

After trying all summer to get close enough to one of these beauties in good light, I finally struck gold, I mean blue! According to allaboutbirds.org ,

The all-blue male Indigo Bunting sings with cheerful gusto and looks like a scrap of sky with wings. Sometimes nicknamed “blue canaries,” these brilliantly colored yet common and widespread birds whistle their bouncy songs through the late spring and summer all over eastern North America. Look for Indigo Buntings in weedy fields and shrubby areas near trees, singing from dawn to dusk atop the tallest perch in sight or foraging for seeds and insects in low vegetation.

Like all other blue birds, Indigo Buntings lack blue pigment. Their jewel-like color comes instead from microscopic structures in the feathers that refract and reflect blue light, much like the airborne particles that cause the sky to look blue.

All of these pictures are of the same bird, but have varied shades of blue according to the way the light is hitting the bird. So beautiful!